SHOCKING vandalism at a Newport school this week will be all too familiar to teachers around the country.

But innovative schemes do appear to be able to go some way towards tackling a problem which can eat into school budgets and disrupt education.

Yobs used a baseball bat and ball to break 11 windows at Millbrook junior and infants schools in Bettws on the weekend.

More than 100 infant pupils were unable to enter the library and areas of the school hall were cordoned off to make it safe to use.

The cost of the damage is likely to run into hundreds of pounds - money that would be better spent on materials and staff to educate the pupils.

Newport council has pioneered a scheme in some of the city's schools which has seen the problem greatly reduced.

A spokeswoman said: "Since the introduction of the CCTV in Schools Initiative, incidents of vandalism have definitely fallen."

Eveswell Primary was the first to be chosen to pilot the project and cameras were installed in December 2000.

Its success meant that less than a year later the Home Office gave it the official seal of approval by handing over a £500,000 cash boost to the Newport Community Safety Partnership which was behind the scheme.

This meant it was able to include a further 20 schools in the scheme.

At the time Chris Freegard, managing director of Newport council and chairman of the partnership, revealed the authority had spent more than £350,000 on school vandalism during the previous year.

"It is important to note that the financial cost of repairing damage has to be paid for by each individual school. This money could otherwise be spent on the education needs of our children," he said.

The CCTV in Schools initiative was developed jointly by the council and Gwent Police with a consortium of private companies.

Eveswell was chosen to pilot the scheme because it suffered from high levels of anti-social behaviour. This was stamped out following the introduction of the cameras which are monitored in the council's CCTV control room.

More than 20 schools are now linked to the scheme and one indicator of how it has made a difference is that in one year nearly £46,000 was saved just on window replacement.